The set of innovative technologies for production of raster (anilox) rollers that determine the flexograph printing quality and productivity is proposed:
(1)Arc-plasma powder spraying, gas detonation spraying and self-spreading high temperature synthesis technologies for the production of ceramic rollers that obtain superior wear- and corrosion-resistant properties;
(2) Technology of improvement of wear-resistance of anilox rollers with high line resolution (up to 400 lines/cm) made by moleting up to the level of ceramic anilox rollers. This technology includes the process of ion-plasma spraying of nitride coating with a thickness less than 5µm on a rastered surface. For this purpose the method of magnetron vacuum spraying of refractory targets is designed, tested and successfully used in industrial conditions.
Mechanical and tribological properties are investigated using traditional laboratory methods as well as by special wear tests, and by printing results.
(3) The fundamental investigations are related to transport phenomena in thermal plasma, condensation in ion-plasma flows, gas powder deposition, atmosphere and low pressure spraying, self-spreading high-temperature synthesis of new materials and chemical transformations in the surface layers of materials under laser-plasma action.
The main scientific results are in the fields of:
physics and mechanics of rubbed surface with hard wear-resistant coating; physics of thin TiN-films; ion-flux and laser treatment structural-phase modifying of materials.
Some results in physics and chemistry of non-equilibrium oxidising of TiN-films are of great fundamental importance and may be used not only for narrow task of rollers strengthening but in tools production - everywhere where TiN functional coating are used.
New Structural-phase modified states that were discovered are already planned to be used in rollers treatment practice.
The results show that the life-time of modified anilox rollers is up to 3-6 times longer than for the traditional methods. New scientific results allow to use some new materials such as porous arc-sprayed stainless steel and copper layers, new compositions of vacuum layers (Cr-TiN) for raster and other printing rollers strengthening treatment. The proposed set of technologies has been applied for the production of new rollers and for the repairing of wear of re-used ones.